Yes I'm Ivy, but let me explain my pride.

University of Pennsylvania

I can’t remember the exact date of my college graduation. But I can remember everything else.

Ominous gray clouds on a blustery May morning belied the excitement of thousands of intelligent bodies in black dressing gowns and square hats. In such a crowd, we all found ways to distinguish ourselves. There were tassels and bright colored scarves bearing the names of honor societies, academic clubs and special affiliations woven brilliantly through an otherwise somber tapestry. We gathered in a sea of faces, distracted by our own expectations. So many took it all in at once snapping pictures, hugging and laughing as we waited for clouds to break and the procession to commence. I could see no one but him. Just off to my right, standing fifteen feet from us the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania, stood a University employee who had been waiting for this day since my first library card. 

Once I found him, I couldn’t take my eyes from him. My father. I remember thinking that I had never seen him smile as broadly as he was. He snapped me, how I wished for a camera to snap him, but the image remains indelibly imprinted in my mind.  He was wearing a suit, like every other proud parent, but atop his head was the same baseball cap he wore every morning on his way to work at one of the campus libraries. The library system he would call his employer for over 25 years. He stood with his coworkers, the folks who were like an extended family of aunts and uncles. As the procession began down a wet and slippery Locust Walk my father moved with us. Grinning. Eyes welled. Accepting congratulatory slaps on the back from friends he had grown up with in the outlying neighborhood.  And he didn’t take his eyes off me until we were forced to separate at the entrance gate to Franklin Field.

So often, I am met with quiet disdain for my Penn pride. Snobbish, privileged Ivy League kids with their portentousness and lack of grace. My pride is often mistaken for a sense of entitlement, but I understand the reasons behind the eye rolls and murmurs when I observe so many of my fellow alumni. Still I feel angry. Because they don’t know the Penn that my eyes gleam with pride for. They do not know why I proudly display that alumni banner. They don’t understand why my Dad and I trade Penn merchandise year after year. I promise you, it’s not for the reasons most would think.

My graduation day was not mine, it was my father’s. His moment of affirmation. My Dad didn’t attend his graduation once he completed the degree program at Wharton. He was working a full time job at the university, raising two children and trying to start his own business. There was no time for celebration. Bills needed paying, life needed living, kids needed tending.  I didn’t see his actual degree until my freshman year at the same institution. It was surreal at that time; his pride. He had an abundance of it, pride and appreciation of me. He struggled with letting me see it, but occasionally I knew how to find it like a child who finds what looks to be a secret treasure.

My Penn was not affluence and privilege. My Penn was two generations of hard work, endurance and perseverance in the face of countless people who said it couldn’t be done. It would be impossible for a man with a GED, home from war, to matriculate into Wharton, with a young family and a full time job. Eight years of night school later, my father was a Wharton grad. So while I complained about getting chased home every day by slick pretty girls who wanted to whip my ass, my father shrugged and said, get it done. When my first round of SAT scores didn’t cut the requirement, he shrugged and said, get it done. When he dropped my political science textbook into my lap the summer after I completed ninth grade with the command that I outline the entire book over the summer, it was get it done. And when I received my acceptance letter, the message was the same. Get it done.

We rode to the University everyday in his beat up Dodge Caravan. We talked about my classes when I dropped in on him at the library, or met him for lunch. He told me stories of the Penn he remembered on our drives back to West Oak Lane each evening. We had a shared experience that belonged exclusively to us. Many nights I sat up in my back bedroom studying and fearing his wrath if I ever faced academic probation, wondering if I ever wanted this dream. Some times, I didn’t. But he instilled in me a belief about our legacy at the University. His as a student who was told no, but always managed to keep pushing until someone said yes. My mother as the granddaughter of Julian Francis Abele, one of the chief designers of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and first African American graduate of Penn’s school of architecture. And so I persisted. And so I prevailed. As my father did. As my great-grandfather did. As many other people from various economic backgrounds and social statuses, did.

That is my University of Pennsylvania. It is blue collar. Determined. Strong. Willful. Persistent. Unwavering. My University of Penn pride rests in the eyes of every employee on that campus that makes a sacrifice in the hopes that one day their children will reap the greater benefit. It lies in my memories of summer camp, running down Locust walk with thick pigtails flying and no comprehension of what made me any different than the students I watched studying on the broken button in front of Van Pelt library. It is in the smiles of the people on that campus who raised me, looked after me and loved me as one of their own.

Am I proud to be a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania? Yes. But before you assume you know why, perhaps you’ll want to know my story.